Issue Position: Education

Issue Position

I will fight for a high quality, public education system where every student has the opportunity to succeed and to feel safe no matter their race, gender identity, immigration status, sexual orientation, the language they speak, or their family income.

We need to do better for the students who need a safe, engaging, fully funded learning environment and for the public servants who protect, educate, and inspire the next generation of Oregonians.

Our educators deserve competitive salaries. No teacher should be making poverty-level wages, and be forced to live outside their school district to teach there.

I will stand for our under-served students. To put a failure of equity in educational outcomes on our public education system - or worse, our public educators - is shameful and ignores the responsibility that federal, state, and local policies have played in creating this inequitable system.

We need investments in more support staff, after and before-school programming, and in decreasing class sizes. We need investment in universal Pre-K. We need continued revenue funding streams for these issues, and I will make it a priority in my first term to get a bill funded by tax increases on the largest corporations to the floor of the House in order to do just that. While the passage of the Student Success Act provides critical revenue to our schools, it does not reverse decades of disinvestment. We cannot wait for more time to pass by to make further investment in our schools - while students, teachers, and our community-at-large struggle to bridge the gaps resulting from insufficient funding.

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